Dale Fontenot: July 2011

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Breakthrough Toward Quantum Computing

redwolfe7707 writes "Qubit registers have been a hard thing to construct; this looks to be a substantial advance in the multiple entanglements required for their use. Quoting: 'Olivier Pfister, a professor of physics in the University of Virginia's College of Arts & Sciences, has just published findings in the journal Physical Review Letters demonstrating a breakthrough in the creation of massive numbers of entangled qubits, more precisely a multilevel variant thereof called Qmodes. ... Pfister and researchers in his lab used sophisticated lasers to engineer 15 groups of four entangled Qmodes each, for a total of 60 measurable Qmodes, the most ever created. They believe they may have created as many as 150 groups, or 600 Qmodes, but could measure only 60 with the techniques they used.'"
In related news, research published in the New Journal of Physics (abstract) shows "how quantum and classical data can be interlaced in a real-world fiber optics network, taking a step toward distributing quantum information to the home, and with it a quantum internet."

Monday, July 18, 2011

What happens when you marry sports, sensors & social?

New York Road Runners and MapMyRUN are collaborating to share real-time athlete data from this year's New York Marathon, thanks to GPS sensors, RFID tags and software. This combination of sports, sensor and social brings a shared experience between athletes and spectators. Here's why it matters.

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7 Days With a Google Chromebook

jfruhlinger writes "Now that Chromebook laptops are finally here, the question is: can you really do serious work with them? The only way to find out is to dive on in, and so Steven Vaughn-Nichols spent a week using a Chromebook for all his daily computing tasks. In the end, he was mostly positive on the experience — but was frustrated by a number of rough edges, including poor documentation and a failure of some components of the system to work together."

Elizabeth Warren: I Am Fine With Not Heading The Consumer Protection Agency If That Means It Can Survive

"We are not, not, not going to let the minority come in and dictate the terms of this agency, rip its arms and legs off before it's able to help a single family."

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The digital divide and the end of Internet freedom

Technology used by ISPs as well as regulatory decisions have shaped the Internet. The New America Foundation sees danger in the current evolution of the Internet as the web becomes segregated by what people are allowed to access and the cost of that access.

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Four short links: 14 July 2011

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Sunday, July 17, 2011

Zappedy Acquired By Groupon. What?s Zappedy?

An anonymous tipster tells us Zappedy, a company that offered various technology products for local businesses, has been acquired by Groupon, information that turns out to be correct according to a message posted on the former's website (which, sadly, hasn't been archived by the�Wayback Machine).

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Why don't they get it?

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Using Rollbase to Migrate Force.com Apps Elsewhere, a Hands-on Report

One comment I hear regularly from Salesforce.com users (or potential users) are the concerns around the price, and lack of flexibility around pricing, of the Salesforce.com solution. It's an issue that I predicted would see some movement at Dreamforce last year, but one that Salesforce.com has been mostly resisting. Part of the reason that it hasn't had to adjust pricing is that Salesforce.com users are essentially locked in to the platform. For example, someone wanting to do some development testing work on a Force.com application has no option but to do it on Force.com itself.

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Ben Kepes is author of Diversity.net.nz, a blog that focuses on SaaS, cloud-computing and Web 2.0 for the real world.

That may just be changing. Rollbase, an alternative platform that we covered recently, has introduced an automatic migration from Force.com. This means that users can, in theory, take a Force.com application and transfer it, with the application logic intact, to either Rollbase's own servers or, in something amusing given Salesforce.com's disdain of servers, to on-premise customer hardware.

Rollbase is pretty cheap and cheerful - monthly fees for a basic service are $30 with tiered pricing for more specific functionality. It's also eminently flexible in terms of deployment - Rollbase.com can host it on its own cloud or it can be downloaded

The Rollbase Automated Force.com Migration Tool (this is the bit that aims to ease the acquisition of Force.com customers) is available now at no additional cost as part of the Rollbase.com Hosted Cloud service as well as Rollbase Private Cloud, which can be downloaded, installed and deployed on both in-house or third party hardware.

There are a couple of caveats, the Rollbase site advises that:

Rollbase cannot convert APEX and SOQL code for you. Some formula fields and components with custom code may not work in Rollbase without modification

I decided to put Rollbase to the test and in an undercover operation, with the names of the operatives changed to protect their privacy (for obvious) reasons, I arranged for a trial of Rollbase to occur. We discovered the following:

Initial hiccup. Signed up, received login details but they didn't work. Seems the email goes out immediately but there is some delay in provisioning the account. Tried again later and it worked.
UI is fairly basic and spare.
CRM module inspired by Salesforce.com clearly. Same core objects, core functionality.
Salesforce.com import feature was simple and straight forward. Tested importing a standard object Cases and a related custom object.
Looks like formula fields etc come across but the syntax won't always translate.
Received an email from Rollbase CEO Matt Robinson advising they had proactively fixed my formulas which hadn't translated. Very good.

On balance for the price it seems very reasonable. They've managed to incorporate a good deal of functionality.

That's a pretty ringing endorsement from this person who isn't one to lavish praise readily. Rollbase has a logical use case out there - it's unlikely to see any sort of mass migration from Salesforce.com, partly because of the limitations on what can be imported and partly because of all the extra service and support (and, yes, certainty) that goes with being a Salesforce.com customer). However for very plain implementations of Salesforce.com, or specific test/dev situations, Rollbase could be on to a winner. It's also worth considering that the Microsoft Access import feature might be appealing for some organizations as a way to inexpensively convert simple Microsoft Access database applications to cloud delivery.

The video below gives an intro to the Rollbase solution:

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Robot Helps Quadriplegic Scratch an Itch

An anonymous reader writes "Georgia Tech's Healthcare Robotics Lab and Willow Garage have been collaborating with Henry Evans, who became a mute quadriplegic after suffering a stroke 10 years ago, to use a PR2 robot as his surrogate. The robot is allowing him to do things like shave himself and scratch itches when he has them, things for which he's been dependent on other people. Henry uses a head tracker to directly move the robot's body, including its arms and head, or invoke autonomous actions, such as navigating in a room or fetching objects. The researchers hope personal robots will allow people with severe physical disabilities to live better and gain more independence."

Following Twitter

In honor of Twitter?s fifth anniversary the folks at Visually have made the following graphic plotting out key milestones on it's path to 200 million tweets a day. Following Twitter, get it?

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Android This Week: Facebook Phone status; MyTouch 4G Slide arrives; Nook Color tablet

Consumers waiting for a Facebook phone will see one tomorrow, July 17, but it won't come from Facebook. The HTC Status, for AT&T's network, has a dedicated Facebook button for sharing. T-Mobile's myTouch 4G Slide camera has impressed so far. Could it replace your point-and-shoot?

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UFC On Versus 6 Fights Announced

The second half of 2011 is shaping up rather quickly for the UFC. This past week alone saw Tito Ortiz added last minute to face Rashad Evans at UFC 133. We also saw the very quick formations of the UFC 137 and 137 lineups.

Today, the details on the “UFC on Versus 6” card started to trickle out. Versus is contracted for 4 shows throughout 2011 and this should be the final one. UFC’s official Twitter page announced that welterweights Charlie Brenneman and Anthony Johnson will meet. Also, lightweights Mac Danzig and Matt Wiman will square off in their long-awaited rematch.

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